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So, I recently posted my opinion on what I thought cheating did to women. Since then, I have thought more about it, and I came to the conclusion that there was a much more long lasting affect that I did not include in my initial post. I would be doing myself as well as other women an injustice to not address this. I would have to say that the main effect that being cheated on has on a woman is that it NEGATIVELY AFFECTS HER FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS AND EFFORTS AT RELATIONSHIPS. See when a woman is cheated on, she throws all men in the category with man who cheated on her. She is defensive and guarded. She cannot properly give love or receive it because her trust is shot. She does not believe that this time will be any different and that is the way she treats any man that approaches her. When something good comes her way, she questions it or sabotages it because she subconsciously believes that it is indeed too good to be true. For example, if a guy comes in and does all the things that the woman was not getting in the previous relationship, she is prone to think he is fake or just putting on. In a new relationship, a woman who has been hurt is just sitting around waiting on this guy’s true colors to appear.

The issue with this is that not all men are the same, and just because you had a bad experience with a guy, you cannot allow that experience to determine how you view and treat every other man that comes in your life. Not everybody is out to use and abuse you. There are some good men left, but you will never find him if you are still living in the dust of what happened to you.

Now, I am not saying that you should not be careful and pay attention to early signs, but you cannot allow what happened to you to determine what will happen to you. Treating a new man according to how an unfaithful ex treated you is allowing the very person who hurt you to control your life. If he is a factor in your decision making when dating, then he is still winning. HE IS STILL RULING YOUR LIFE EVEN IN HIS ABSENCE. Don’t give him that power. Does he deserve it? Moreover, what you are really doing is running a potentially good guy away. You will never be happy if you just refuse to let go of what happened to you. Again, not all men are the same.

If you find yourself getting the same types of men, then that says something about your taste in men rather than the character of all men.

Ok, so you had a bad relationship. It happens. Bounce back! Get over it. Dust yourself off, and try to love again. You are capable of giving and receiving real love. It can happen. Don’t give up on it or ruin it because you were hurt.

Many people feel that it is a great insult and offense for someone to cause them to waste their money. I have even heard people say, “The worst thing you can do to me is waste my money!” I disagree. The ultimate betrayal that can be done to a person is wasting their time. Wasted time, in my opinion, is one of the biggest losses you can suffer.

If someone wastes my money, then I can work harder and earn EVERY CENT back. No real damage has been done. However, if someone wastes my time, there is no task I can do, no second job I can take up, no side hustle I can perform to get my wasted time back. Once my time is wasted, it is lost forever. The damage done there is beyond repair.

I charge you to be careful with your time. Don’t allow people to waste it, and more importantly don’t you waste it. You will never get it back. What you don’t want to do is find yourself looking back and thinking what you could have been doing, would have been doing, or should have been doing had you not been wasting your time. Think about it.

One thing that I have always struggled with is forgiveness. I must admit that I always had two struggles with forgiveness. I either didn’t want to forgive, or I didn’t know how to forgive. For years, I toiled with the burden of not forgiving people who had hurt me. I didn’t hold grudges or treat people badly, but I always held a mental note of what the person had done to me. I called this a burden because I was the person who was constantly thinking about the hurt when the person who had done it had probably forgotten about it a long time ago. In addition, to holding a mental note, I also had to constantly remind people of what they did to me or how they hurt me. So here I am bitter and mad because I’m still carrying around someone else’s guilt. I didn’t do the damage so I shouldn’t be carrying around the guilt from it.
Another thing I had to learn was that if you aren’t going to forgive a person who wronged you then you should just leave that person completely alone. This is especially true in relationships. For example, if your significant others wrongs you, then you have two options. You can forgive and stay, or you can not forgive and leave. If you can’t forgive that person, then you cannot properly love the person. Love does not keep record of wrong doing, so how can you love a person if you keep bringing up something that they did to you? You have to make a choice, and if staying is your choice than you can’t bring that hurt with you. Bringing old baggage with you hinders you from loving like you are otherwise capable of loving, and that’s not fair to you or your mate.
Now, if you have been hurt beyond repair and you feel you need to leave, then do that. However, leave that baggage behind too. It is possible to forgive a person and leave them. Forgiveness does not mean you have to rekindle the relationship. Forgive the person so that you can be free. Forgiveness is not for the person who hurt you; it’s for YOU!!! A person who hurt you does not have the right to be in your life after his or her time has expired. As long as you don’t forgive, you keep that person in your mind and in your heart, and you can never properly move on. If you want a fresh start, then try forgiving. You’ll thank yourself for it later.
Forgiveness means letting it go. Forgiveness means not bashing a person every chance you get (even though it may feel good doing so), forgiveness means living your life for you, forgiveness means keeping no record of things done to you. Forgiveness means truly leaving the past in the past.
If you find yourself weighed down with hurt from the past, do your SOUL a favor and FORGIVE!!!

I think that one of the hardest things in life to do is let go of a bad situation. Letting go is so scary because it requires you to step really far outside of your comfort zone. As long as you hang on to what you are familiar to, you do not have to worry about starting over, learning something new, or becoming acquainted with something all over again. This can go for any walk of life. Sometimes, it is just time to let go. Although holding on may be the most comfortable choice, it may also be the most expensive choice. You are paying for holding on: you are paying with your happiness, your peace of mind, and your mental stability. Is it really worth such a lofty price.

It’s like playing a losing game of tug o’ war, the more you hold on to that rope trying to pull it back to your, the more energy you are wasting and the more physical pain you are causing yourself. You are trying so hard to win the game, but you are not paying attention to the blisters you are creating on hands by tugging on that rope with all your might. It is sad to say, but sometimes you are actually winning when you just let go of the work. You saved some energy and you saved yourself from some unwanted pain.

I hear a lot of people say that they do not let go because they have invested so much time and energy in the situation. For example, people say that they don’t leave relationships because they have put so much into them. However, what does it matter what you put into something if you are not getting anything out? Take all that energy and effort you are putting into a bad situation, and put it into you and your goals. You deserve more than to give you very best effort and it return to your void. Let it go. If you are in a bad situation, letting it go can be one of the healthiest things you can do. You will thank yourself later. You can’t be concerned about what people think or what people will say. There comes a point when you have to make a selfish decision and say, I am doing this for me and NOT anyone else. People may not always understand your decision, but do they have to live with it?

Letting go allows you to see what could be. When your hold on, you are sometimes stopping yourself from accomplishing all you can accomplish. True enough, you may go from one bad situation to another, but at least you will be able to say that you were brave enough to let go of what had you bound and move on to the unknown. The next situation may not always be a better one, but if you are already in a bad situation what do you really have to lose? You will never know what life has for you until you try. Scared people never changed the world. Let go of a bad situation even if it is all you know and see how easily all you know becomes all you KNEW.

I think that it is impossible to be the BEST YOU that you can be if you are holding one to something that is not good for you. Even on a job, you can’t provide your best work if you are a disgruntled employee. Seek to do things that makes you peaceful and happy, and let go of anything that makes you uneasy, sad or angry. This could mean taking a leap of faith and venturing into unknown, unfamiliar territory. You will survive; it won’t be easy, and in the beginning it won’t be comfortable, but it will be WORTH IT.

Anything that is not helping your grow is tearing you down. Even with your hand in a lion’s mouth, it suggest you sacrifice your hand just to save the rest of you. LET IT GO!!!!

A while ago, I had a friend to vent to be about something her boyfriend was doing that she did not like. She said he did it quite frequently, and that it really bothered her. I immediately asked her what he said when she told him she didn’t like it. She laughed and admitted to me that she had decided not to mention it to him. I told her that she was to blame and not him. You just can’t hold something against someone when you haven’t communicated with them. NO ONE CAN READ YOUR MIND!!!

This conversation made me realize that I also ignore things that should be addressed. I wonder why women find it so difficult to fend for themselves in relationships. Shouldn’t it be easy to communicate with a person you’re in love with. Now we can tell you what you should say to your man, but we are quiet as church mice in our own homes.

I think that women are, by nature, quite protective people. We will put you in your place without thought if you have gotten out of line with someone or something we love. Mess with a woman’s mother or her child and find out just how lethal she can be. The peculiar thing to me is that I often notice that we aren’t as protective of ourselves. The same lady who would snap your neck about her child will become totally silent when it comes to defending herself. I find this to be especially true in relationships. A woman will be bothered by something her spouse is doing, and she will just ignore it rather than verbalizing her true feelings on the matter.

The issue with ignoring things that bother you is that those small issues tend to fester. They don’t go away or fix themselves just because you decided to maintain the peace in your relationship by not addressing it. In fact, because you didn’t address it, you gave your significant other the idea that everything was fine. This means that more likely than not he will do whatever it was that bothered you again. After all, you haven’t told him that anything was wrong.

The big issue is that the more you ignore things, the more they pile up. The more they pile up, the more bitterness and resentment you carry inside. Allow me to tell you that resentment is HEAVY. IT WILL WEIGH YOU DOWN! Wouldn’t it just be easier to speak up for yourself and say how you feel? Now I’m not telling you to become a nagging, picking pain in a man’s side, but I am saying speak up for yourself. Express yourself and tell how these things make you feel. Because the truth of the matter is when you do something that he doesn’t like or agree with, HE IS GOING TO LET YOU KNOW, and let’s just face it when he lets you know you’re going to try to adjust because you want to maintain the peace. So, why can’t he adjust for you? Speak up for yourself. Don’t let things build up. Don’t wait until you are too fed up to have a productive conversation. When you have let things go too far and have become angry and belligerent, you are not being heard. In fact, he is not even listening to you. Communication on the front end can help alleviate issues before they become cancerous to your relationship.

Speak up for you. Protect your own peace. Say what you feel. Things will only get worse if you don’t express your feelings. Don’t let that little itch become an unbearable rash.

Disclaimer: By no means do I proclaim to be an expert. I’m just a woman with experiences. The experiences of pain, betrayal, triumph, failure, laughter, and sadness. I have felt it all. I won’t throw myself a pity party and say I’ve had a bad life. It’s been just the contrary; I have had a great life. If my life were a portrait, it would be a beautifully painted picture of the world with minor mistakes made by the painter. Those mistakes in the portrait represent the many downs I have had in a life that I consider to be a pretty happy one. My valley experiences are what qualify me to author this post. I came up with the concept for this particular blog post when I realized that most of the bad things I have gone through in my life were a direct result of a bad decision I had made. I saw a pattern: I made poor decisions and I suffered the natural consequence that was associated with that decision. The purpose of this post isn’t to blame every woman for every bad situation that she has. However, I would like to make women cognizant of the fact that sometimes it’s not the world against us (as we often say), it’s US AGAINST US. A woman’s biggest enemy, her biggest hindrance, and her biggest burden is often herself. How, you might ask? Keep reading and discover how I THINK a woman can and most times will be her own demise.

I’ve often heard men and women say “Men have it easier” when it comes to relationships. That is the biggest load of malarkey I have ever heard. In actuality men have it much harderbecause they are in a lose-lose situation. Men are doomed because they are more likely than not charged with the task of pleasing a woman who does not know what it takes to please herself. Women are peculiar creatures with peculiar ways. Very few people, if any, have been able to successfully determine why a woman is so complex. This complexity in women, in my opinion, makes women more powerful. Well one might ask if women are so powerful, then why are the woes of a woman so magnanimous? Women want to know way they have it so hard? Why they are on the losing end of the relationship game. Women wonder why they are seen as weak, nagging, emotional beings? The answer to each of those questions is quite simple. Although women are quite powerful, they have it so hard because they make a cycle of mistakes that diminishes their God-given power and causes them to be that weak individual that they are perpetually labeled as. The mistakes that women make in relationships are not exclusive to a certain race, pay grade, or body type; ALL WOMEN INCLUDING ME have done one of these things at one point in their lives. In fact, I think I am still making some of these mistakes. Before I list the mistakes, I think I should warn you AGAIN that I am no expert, I am just a woman who is willing to admit that most of the time, I am the sole cause of my unhappiness. Can you admit the same ladies? I will list and briefly describe the top mistakes that I think women make which leave us powerless and hurt.

1. Not making men afford us: I think that we give too much of ourselves too soon and require too little. A man will not willingly do what is not required of him. We will not require a man to do “manly” things and then get mad when he does them for someone else. Well maybe she required them. If you give a man the easy way out, he will take it. If there is a man in your life, then why are you pumping your own gas, why is he not taking your garbage out, why are you worrying about how your car will get fixed or cleaned? (This is definitely one I had to learn the hard way.)

2. Competing with other women: The moment you felt you had to compete, you had already lost. Furthermore, why are you competing with Sarah when he is likely interested in Jane too. I mean really there is nothing you can beat this woman at doing to make him stop pursuing her if that is what he wants to do. I mean a man cheated on Halle Berry and who can hold a candle to her. Stop using your energy competing with a woman while the man is using his energy toward that very same woman and others.

3. Trying to please everyone: You will not please everyone; stop trying. It is okay to make a decision that makes you happy. THE END!!!

4. Thinking that we can love a man into loving us: A man will soak up all your love and give his to the person he loves. You can cook, clean, and fulfill other needs, and he will reap all those benefits AND STILL NOT LOVE YOU. You can not make a man love you and you can not stop a man who loves you from loving you.

5. Being committed to a single man: This one is self-explanatory! I have been there and done that. Let’s just say it is not a good feeling. If he is living like he is single, then you should be too. I am not suggesting that you sleep around, but I am saying quit giving him relationship privileges when he is clearly not committed to you.

6. Investing time in the wrong things: Why is it that you don’t know how many books there are in the Bible, but you know how many followers your boyfriend’s side chick has on Instagram. Need I say more?

I really hope my unimportant opinion helped at least one person. Ha! I hope that writing this helped ME. I am also a work in progress, but ladies we have to get it together if we ever want to be happy. Pray for my strength as I pray for yours.